


how to return home

by julie_slamdrews



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: F/F, Modern AU, Slow Burn, except not that slow because my brain goes 1000 miles an hour, semi-follows canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-01-27 19:14:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21397258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie_slamdrews/pseuds/julie_slamdrews
Summary: Anne Lister is back in Halifax after yet another heartbreak. But she's not going to be there long, and she definitely isn't interested in her family's attempts at matchmaking. Or is she?
Relationships: Anne Lister (1791-1840)/Ann Walker (1803-1854)
Comments: 35
Kudos: 133





	1. same same but different

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a conversation with a friend about interfering families and their need to set up their single offspring. This first chapter is quite similar to canon (without all the period touches), will diverge more as we go on.

She should have remembered the cobbles.

Her wheeled case had been an irritation in London, forcing her to stoop slightly and making crowds more of a navigational challenge. But within five minutes of stepping off the train in Halifax, Anne was ready to abandon it entirely.

It bounced and jarred on the cobbles, slowing her pace so much that she had just been overtaken. Overtaken! By a woman who must have been twice her age and needed a stick to walk.

Really, she should have brought a duffle bag or backpack but the priority had been getting out of that house as fast as possible and the suitcase had been closest to hand.

It wasn’t just the cobbles that were familiar. Nothing about Halifax seemed to have changed in the last twenty years.

The bakery on the corner was the same one she and Sam had begged cakes from as children, she even thought she recognised the kindly old lady serving behind the counter. None of the shops on the high street had changed either, despite the rise and fall of new chains in practically every other town in the country. Even the tree she had fallen out of on her eleventh birthday and broken her wrist didn’t seem to have grown or changed in the slightest.

The house too, she thought with a sigh as it came into view. Or maybe that wasn’t the same. It seemed smaller somehow, shabbier, a reminder of all of her failures.

“Anne!” The front door opened and her aunt rushed out, already breathless with the exertion. “It’s so good to have you home!”

“You should have stayed inside,” Anne said gruffly, kissing her aunt on the cheek. “Marian, why didn’t you make her stay inside? I was coming in anyway.”

Her younger sister, who had just appeared in the doorway, rolled her eyes. “Of course it’s my fault,” she said. “But she’s right, aunt. You should come inside, it’s cold.”

Anne dragged her case over the foyer and surveyed the inside of the house she had hoped to escape twenty years ago. Leaving the offending bag in the hall, she strode into her father’s study. He barely glanced up from his reading. She cleared her throat.

“Oh hello,” he said. “How long are you back for this time?”

“Not long I expect,” Anne said with rather more bravado than she felt. “I might go to France, or Italy, or perhaps America. I just need to…sort out a few things.”

Her father harrumphed. “And until then we’ll be acting as a glorified hotel I suppose?” He paused. “What went wrong this time?”

“Nothing went wrong!” Anne snapped. She turned on her heel and marched up the stairs. In her old bedroom (also barely changed in the last twenty years), she threw herself onto the bed and stifled a frustrated moan into the pillows. The sooner she finalised these plans and got herself out of the country, the better. Halifax was no place to nurse a broken heart.

And yet you keep bringing your heartbreak back here, said a nasty little voice in her head.

***

“It seems everyone’s coming back to Halifax these days,” he aunt announced at dinner as Anne was trying to think of a way to avoid eating Marian’s lumpy mashed potatoes without starting an all-out war.

“Oh?” She asked wearily.

“Yes, Ann Walker moved back…when was it Marian?”

“August, I think.”

“Yes, August. She was living in Scotland somewhere, near her sister, but her aunt’s not been too well and someone needed to be around to take care of her.” Anne caught a pointed glance from Marian at this, which was enough to make her give up on the mashed potatoes.

“She’s got a job at the florist’s on the high street,” her aunt continued, apparently oblivious to her nieces’ sparring. “She sold me the most beautiful peonies last week.”

“Sorry,” Anne interrupted. “But who is this?”

“Ann Walker.” Her aunt repeated. “Surely you remember her, you were thick as thieves with her brother John growing up.”

“Oh yes,” Anne said vaguely, though in truth she remembered very little of John’s family. If she really focused she could picture the two sisters, each as insipid as the other, squealing at the thought they might get a splatter of mud on their pretty dresses. Anne, who had spent most of her childhood more or less coated in mud, had very little tolerance for that kind of behaviour.

“You should go and visit her,” her aunt was saying now. “Both of you being newly returned to town, you’ve got something in common. I always think she seems sad, poor girl, the company might do her good. Might do you good too, come to that…”

“I don’t think so,” Anne said abruptly. “As far as I remember Miss Walker was dull and stupid. And besides, I don’t intend to be here long. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of unpacking to do.”

And for the second time that day she stormed up the stairs to her bedroom.


	2. new items on the menu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the nice comments! I have the next two chapters already drafted out because I'm addicted to writing these two idiots so shouldn't be too long before I get the next one up. Hope you enjoy this instalment...

Two weeks later and Anne had made frustratingly little progress in her plans to leave Halifax. Or rather she had made plenty of plans but found herself unable to enact any of them.

The crux of the matter was she needed money to travel. Acquiring that money shouldn’t in principle be too difficult, she just needed to offload her share of the relatively lucrative business she’d founded in London. But doing that would mean notifying the other founder, which would mean talking to the other founder, which would mean, well…

Next time Vere called she’d pick up the phone, she promised herself. Let her know that she didn’t want to be acrimonious, just to dispose of her share in the business and get on with her life. But that promise was easy to keep when, after a week of missed calls and unopened voicemails, communication had dried up entirely.

Steeling herself, she dialled her voicemail and selected the last message.

“Anne this is…” A pause, the sound of a frustrated breath being blown out. Anne could picture Vere, the angry little crease between her eyebrows as she silently counted to ten. She had taught her that trick. “I know you’re upset. I don’t really…” Another pause. Anne terminated the message, threw the phone across the room.

Know why you’re upset, was the end of that sentence. Because of course she didn’t. Because most best friends, most business partners, didn’t react to their friends finding love by packing a suitcase and abandoning their lives.

“Most best friends aren’t that stupid.” Anne said to herself.

“Stupid how?” Came a voice from the doorway and Anne jumped, dragging the back of her hand roughly against her eyes before she turned to face her sister.

“Listening at doors now, are we Marian?” She asked acerbically.

“Just checking to see if you were destroying the house,” Marian bit back. “I heard a crash.” Then she studied Anne’s face and her expression softened. “Are you alright?”

“I’m always alright,” Anne snapped, striding over to her desk and shuffling through a pile of papers in a purposeful manner. In the doorway, Marian’s expression cycled between concern and irritation.

“You don’t…I just…would you like to walk into town with me?”

“Hmm?” Anne didn’t look up from the papers.

“I need to pick up some things that got left off the Tesco order. And if you were coming we could go for tea, and maybe a slice of cake? I hear Priestly’s have been trying out some new recipes.”

“That’s unlikely,” Anne grumbled. “I don’t think Priestly’s have changed their menu in the last twenty years. And I hardly think you can call it walking into town when the town in question is three streets across.”

“You needn’t come if you feel that way,” Marian retorted, but she looked more amused than annoyed.

“No no, I could use the exercise.” Anne set the papers down. “And I couldn’t miss out on Priestly’s finally deciding to move with the times.

***

As suspected, Priestly’s nod to a new menu seemed to start and end with printing the old menu on hot pink paper which the young lad taking their orders seemed embarrassed just to be handling.

Marian kept up a constant stream of chatter as they waited for their drinks, mostly detailing the lives and loves of every other patron of the café.

It was tedious and more than a little awkward, but Anne was grateful all the same that her own life seemed to be recognised as off-limits as a topic of conversation. And the outing was, at least, taking her mind off the phone call which she really couldn’t put off much longer.

Marian was distracted from her latest story, about Mr Washington’s daughter and her frankly inappropriate relationship (so many people in this town seemed to be in inappropriate relationships that Anne wondered if there was such a thing of an appropriate one in her sister’s eyes) by the tinkling of the café bell.

A young woman was manoeuvring her way between the tables, arms stacked with boxes. She was pretty, in a delicate, china doll kind of way, and her pink cheeks and wind-mussed curls seemed only to add to this.

“Who’s that?” She wanted to ask Marian, but she knew exactly how her sister would react to her showing interest in a Halifax resident, particularly one of the pretty female variety.

In fact, Marian was already following her gaze with a knowing smile and as the young woman dropped off her boxes at the counter and turned to leave the café she jumped up to intercept her.

They exchanged a few moments of animated but unintelligible conversation before Marian pulled the other woman closer to the table to introduce her.

“I don’t know if you remember my sister, Anne,” she said. “She used to hang about with your John.”

“Oh yes, of course I remember!” The woman said, her whole face seeming to light up. “You were always at the house, you made quite an impression. I’m sure you don’t remember me though.”

Anne was too startled by how very blue the woman’s eyes were to come up with a quick response.

“Will you sit down and have a cup of tea with us, Ann?” Marian asked, and the pieces slotted into place. Ann Walker. Well well well, she’d certainly grown up.

“I’m afraid I can’t.” Ann said, looking genuinely unhappy to decline. “I was only here for delivery, I need to get back to the shop. It was nice to see you though, both of you.” And she hurried back out into the cold.

“I don’t know what Aunt Anne’s talking about,” Anne said to fill the awkward silence that followed. “She doesn’t seem sad. Nervous maybe, but not sad.”

Marian just looked at her, a smug smile creeping over her face.


	3. straight to voicemail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this has taken me so long - I wrote it a couple of weeks ago, decided I hated it, entirely rewrote it, decided I hated the new version more, decided I was giving up writing and now here we are with the original version. Thanks for all the lovely comments, I'll endeavour to get the next chapter up sooner as it's mostly written but I can't promise I won't go through the same process...

"Would it kill you to take your phone out with you?" Marian demanded as Anne marched through the door, stamping her feet to warm them. 

"It's called a digital detox, Marian, you should try it."

"It's called running away from your problems!" Marian followed Anne up the stairs, brandishing the phone like a weapon. "It's called driving your family half-deranged with the incessant ringing!'

"Only half-deranged?" Anne took the phone, trying not to flinch as she saw the name on the notifications. "I shall have to try harder in future."

Door firmly closed behind her, she slumped in her desk chair and scrolled through the notifications. Eight missed calls and as many new voicemails, all from Vere.

A brief sample of the voicemails showed that Vere had given up on the breathing techniques. She was angry and she wanted Anne to know it. Time to face the music.

Vere picked up after only one ring and before she had a chance to start shouting, Anne cut in smoothly.

"Vere. Sorry I missed you, I was walking the dog."

"Need a lot of exercise does he?"

Anne drummed her fingers on the desk. She wasn't going to rise to it. This was going to be a fast conversation, in and out, and by the end of it she was going to have the money to get out of here lined up. 

"You said you needed to talk to me. Is there a problem with the business?"

"Oh so you care about the business now, do you?"

Anne was on the verge of putting the phone down, but she blew out a breath and repeated. "Is there a problem with the business?"

"Not a problem, exactly." Vere said. "More...an opportunity. We've been approached by Rawson's. They want to buy us out."

"How much?" Anne asked, not that it mattered. This was exactly what she wanted. Well, maybe not exactly, she would have rather it wasn't Rawson's, and she was sure getting the money out of them wouldn't be easy. But still. Finally, she was being dealt something approaching the right hand. 

"We'll need to negotiate, but...enough. And I assume that you'll want to take it, given that you've shown no interest in the business since you decided to up and leave."

Anne leaned forward, pressing her fingertips to her temples. "The money would certainly be helpful. I'd like to do some travelling. Russia maybe, or the States. Are you happy to go forward with negotiations?"

"Well I certainly don't want to continue running this operation single-handedly," Vere snapped. A silence ensued, and again Anne pictured that eyebrow crease, the movement of her lips as she counted. It didn't help her mood. 

"I'll let them know we'd like to proceed," Vere said finally. "I'll forward you the initial paperwork and if you can pick up your phone a little more frequently in future I'd appreciate it."

"Good. Excellent. Will do." Anne said, and was poised to terminate the call when Vere spoke again.

"Can we...talk about the other thing?"

"What is there to talk about?"

"I just...I'm concerned I might have upset you. I...worry that I gave you the wrong impression before, and maybe again after, and I think I hurt you. And honestly, that's the last thing I want because I meant what I said, I really do love you...just...not in that way."

Anne swallowed hard. Her voice, when she found it, was quieter and rougher than she would have liked, but it held. 

"You needn't worry about any impression you might have given," she said. "I couldn't be clearer as to where I stand. And I wish you all the best, really I do, but I think it might be...easiest for everyone if we keep our communications to strictly business from now on. Does that sound fair?"

A quiet sigh and then "Of course, if that's what you want. Goodbye Anne. Take care of yourself."

Anne opened her mouth to respond, realised she wouldn't achieve anywhere near the level of composure she wanted, and terminated the call without a goodbye. For a few long moments she just sat, trying to regain control of her breathing, trying to convince herself she wasn't about to vomit on the rug.

She didn't know how long she sat there, but eventually a knock at the door brought her back to herself. She crossed the room, pausing briefly to examine her appearance in the mirror, and yanked the door open.

"Aunt Anne says we're having company for dinner and can you not come down in your walking gear." Marian said 

Anne's fingers went back to her temples, massaging away the headache that had been brewing all day. "Can you tell her I'm feeling unwell?"

"She said you might say that. And she also said that if you did I was to check your temperature..." Marian's hand shot out and felt briefly and brusquely at Anne's forehead. "...and to tell you that if you're well enough to go out walking for three hours then you're well enough to be polite to her friends over dinner. And they'll be here in ten minutes, so get in that shower!"

Anne was perfectly capable of getting dressed in ten minutes, but that evening she took twenty. Had she brought any of her racier outfits from London, she might have worn one, but she settled for black trousers and a dark shirt buttoned right up to her throat. She stomped down the stairs, to be intercepted by her father in the hall.

"You're late."

"I was given very little notice," she fired back. "Who are these surprise dinner guests?"

Over his shoulder she spotted the Priestlys. Excellent. An evening of dodging the enquiries of Halifax's most notorious gossip when she least felt like conversation. And behind them, sipping demurely at a glass of wine as she listened to one of Marian's interminably dull stories, was none other than Ann Walker. 


End file.
